| 词源 |
on the qui vive. French sentries once shouted “Qui vive?” lit- erally “who lives?” as a challenge to discover to which party the person challenged belonged—appropriate answers being [vive] “le roi [king],” “la France,” etc. Thus to be on the qui vive is to be watchful (like a sentry), to be on the alert for something. The expression is first recorded in English by Jonathan Swift in 1726. |